One of the producers on Guilty Gear Strive said it was basically impossible to source player feedback on balance changes online because nobody had original opinions and would just parrot what the most popular content creators said and so they had to rely on data and I think about that every day.

November 23, 2025 - 04:08 UTC

29
113
2371
Huh? How does one differentiate identical feedback as being 'parroted' versus it just being true, resulting in multiple people coming to the same conclusion?

This sounds very much possibly like the wrong conclusions are being drawn due to looking at the problem the wrong way.
2
0
7
Common phrasing, close in time. Not hard to tell if you're following the same youtubers internally
0
0
28
From my experience, most takes just reflect on surface material things that don't get far enough into the situation to dig out the core issue. So then if the symptoms are taken at face value instead of the problem itself, this can cause even more issues over time.
1
0
1
A lot of developers shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to feedback also. Primarily, they don’t have a good system for feedback. It really requires a lot of proactivity on the developers end. Even large studios don’t want to spend the money to do anything like that.
1
0
2
Not to say that was the case with guilty gear.
0
0
1
this is real.

every game learns to stop chasing reddit’s approval pretty quickly because reddit isn’t trying to give you honest explanations of their experiences

they’re trying to be Right
1
0
26
The riot games story
1
0
2
See also: Helldivers 2
0
0
1
i think this is a big part of why mortal kombat is doing so poorly, the devs listen TOO MUCH to the fans while they dont have any real feedback worth listening to (as a whole, i know individually a lot of fans know whats up),
0
0
3
absolutely soul-crushing that you can replace Guilty Gear Strive with any game that has ever had an update and it's still 100% true
1
0
80
Id say Broodwar and SC:remastered are not like that.
0
0
0
I kinda like a content creator I follow for Victoria 3 because, when he has made surveys about the game – which are content, so become a target to make videos – he prefaces the video by pleading viewers to do the survey before watching his video.
0
0
1
I picked it up pretty recently and my main bit of feedback so far is "I would like to play as Dr. Paradigm"
1
0
1
me waiting for Gabriel
1
0
0
The World of Warcraft developers (I think the balance team lead specifically?) said pretty much this exact same thing in an interview a few years ago. It's pretty depressing.
0
0
9
This is straight up how The Culling died.

They listened to the playerbase for balance too aggressively, and most of that feedback was just echo relays of what a CC said.
1
0
3
I haven’t heard about the Culling for years. I almost dropped my phone out of shock, lol.
It had so much potential but true, it was balanced like shit.
But the final deathblow was just stoping to improve the game to work on a sequel. It was practically Splitgate 2 before Splitgate was a thing.
1
0
1
If i ever make a game, i PRAY that it doesn't get picked up by a big streamer with their own "opinion" on it, cuz i can't tell if it would hurt the game's reputation more if i were to accept their feedback or if i told them to fuck right off lol
0
0
1
The other example I think is kinda the reverse, opinions can change how you feel about the game even though nothing truly changed - think it was League where a patch was agreed to have fixed a character and later the devs realised they forgot to actually implement the change ingame
1
0
45
League sparks me of the only problem of data-driven choices is that it falls into the space of how good the company is at interpreting data.

I am still bitter on them removing Hunter's Potion "because it was a loosers' item" when the problem was it only catered to an already losing crowd (tanks)
1
0
12
This recently happened with 2XKO and the Four Horsemen. Regardless of how true it was people locked on to Sajam's assessment like it was gospel
2
0
47
Yeah, it's wild. Never makes sense to me. Like... don't y'all have your own opinions?
3
0
23
Hearing shaun say the four horseman on that video they made was worth it tho
0
0
1
The devs of Killer Instinct had the same thing happen. They tried to be radically transparent in their balance decisions, but ultimately stopped because high-level players and their communities would focus more on influencing the devs than on the game. Ultimately, relying on data was more valuable.
0
0
55
It can be amusing to see a fandbase's opinions change in real time after a content creator uploads a new video.
1
0
4
fandbase nice. I meant fanbase of course.
0
0
0
i've had people who haven't played my game offer me balance suggestions
1
0
74
Jesus wept
1
0
9
Not to dispute this because it does sound very plausible, but do you happen to have the source on this?
1
0
2
I can't look up the video for it right now, but it was an EVO video released around the same time as Slayer (end of Season 3) and it's a bit more nuanced than the initial post suggest.
0
0
0
That's conversations about games, in general.
0
0
0
I worry about Battlefield 6 because devs will make the mistake of asking for feedback over twitter and get the worst opinions from fps streamers who just want to play CoD so they just ask to remove anything that makes it play different than the game they actually want to play
0
0
2
This video is five years old, but to this day I can’t stop thinking about it:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=P05ONfLOqmY
1
0
4
TL,DW: Don’t listen to just a vocal minority. Consider broader, data-informed feedback and use that to drive the development of what you’re aiming to make.

“I don’t like this” and “this does not work for me” is helpful. “Here’s how to fix it” probably isn’t.
0
0
6
To me it was so crazy with the Avowed discourse this year. Like yeah man I am sure having some physics on random kitchen utensils is what made you like Oblivion as teenager and is core to the experience. Oh nice gif of the youtube video comparing those 2 very different games I've seen 40 times bfore
0
0
24
i posted this stuff the other day which is probably in parallel
1
0
3
The elite dangerous sub is absolutely full of complaints from people who are just straight up bad at the game and the devs made the mistake of listening to them, like when they replaced the "a guard has asked you to stop for a search" popup with GIANT RED TEXT and people still ignore it and get shot
1
0
7
This is very funny to me, and I see it all the time. There are a lot of people whose entire opinion about something is driven by whichever streamer they're really into.
0
0
0
A FG dev should exclusively patch based on whoever’s opinion is loudest just to see what happens
1
0
5
every character DSP and LTG pick get huge buffs after they lose
0
0
1
Ion Hazzikostas said the same thing in a WoW interview lately, to the point that he can pinpoint which videos people are watching when they say the same half dozen arguments
0
0
30
Any slightly online game will have this and it's insane. 6 different guys scream about balance and player retention and they aren't even developers.
0
0
5
Oh yeah, don’t get me started on multiplayer games having their entire futures dictated by content creators. I get real mad about that one LOL
2
0
308
Oh just whait what they will do to the beautiful gem called Arc Raiders😭

The horde of yt-shorts producing locusts are butchering my boy as we speak.
0
0
0
I still remember Destiny content creators pushing ideas that would obviously be detrimental to the game and giving the devs the confidence to go through with them
4
0
142
I have never ever done this before. Anyway let me delete everything I have ever said on the internet.
0
0
2
When people say to just listen to fans for balance I think about how everything that required high skill for high reward in Overwatch got balanced out until the game became boring
0
0
5